Orange-owner France Telecom to act after 23 suicides by staff

The French government has ordered the chief executive of France Telecom, the
owner of the mobile phone operator Orange, to explain a wave of suicides at
the company.

France Telecom on Monday held an emergency conference call with senior managers to discuss ways to help staffPhoto: AP

By Rupert Neate, City Reporter

7:40PM BST 14 Sep 2009

Didier Lombard, chief executive of France Telecom, has been summoned to meet Xavier Darcos, the French Labour Minister, on Tuesday morning to discuss why 23 French Telecom employees have taken their own lives in the last 18 months.

Christine Lagarde, the French Finance Minister, has also ordered the former state-owned telecoms company to call a board meeting to discuss the suicides as soon as possible.

Ms Lagarde said the company needed to send out "very strong message to the personnel'' that action is being taken to combat the suicides. A spokesman for the company said an emergency board meeting to discuss the problem will be held in the next few weeks.

France Telecom on Monday held an emergency conference call with thousands of senior managers to discuss ways to help staff who may be considering taking their own lives.

"Managers were given a clear message to quickly organise local meetings to explain what happened and what's being done, and to make sure that if there are problems they can be discussed," a company spokesman said.

French unions are blaming worries about a mass cost reorganisation of departments, which has seen over 10,000 staff forced to change roles over the last three years, for the tragic turn of events.

On Friday a 32-year-old employee became the latest victim when she leapt from the fifth-floor of a Paris office block. Her death came after a meeting to discuss the reorganisation of the customer services department, where she worked.

Two days earlier a 48-year-old technician in Troynes, to the east of Paris, stabbed himself during a meeting in which he was told his post would be scrapped.

"The crisis at France Telecom is now a national problem," the unions Force Ouvriere and Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFTC) said in a joint statement. "Full light must be shed on the causes of these tragedies and of the growing malaise within the company."

François Chérèque, secretary-general of the CDFT, said: "This is a company which has a single goal of making money and inevitably, the employees at France Telecom, who were used to another work relationship with customers, are asked to turn a profit.

"These are not personal tragedies. We know that suicide stems from some personal problems but to commit this act at the workplace is a cry for help tied to the place where the action is taken," he added.

France Telecom said it would suspend the reorganisation of the company until the end of October. The company, which employs 102,000 staff, has also taken on additional 100 human resources staff to tackle workplace stress.